In a struggle that is eerily similar to the battle for the Mexican American Studies a decade ago, teachers, students, and community activists in California are fighting to defend the content and pedagogy of ethnic studies.
An Israeli military court could send anti-apartheid activist Issa Amro to jail next week for among other absurd charges using the word “stupid” with an Israeli soldier. An international campaign to stop Amro’s sentencing now includes the Canadian mission to Ramallah, novelist Raja Shehadeh and the liberal Zionist org J Street.
Liberal Zionist groups have all but ignored B’Tselem’s bombshell report stating that Israel is an apartheid regime. And no wonder, the report impugns the progressive credentials of any organization that calls itself pro-Israel, and apartheid demands use of a tool liberal Zionists have rejected as allegedly antisemitic, BDS.
Israel’s shooting of a 24-year-old Palestinian who was trying to hold on to a generator used in construction in occupied territories has been viewed globally. It increases pressure on Americans to shut off the spigot of aid. One thing will stop Israel from ethnic cleansing of West Bank that requires shooting Palestinians: US pressure. But US press and liberal Zionists come up short.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Betty McCollum and the UN and EU condemned Israeli killing of boy protester Friday, and JVP called for an end to US military aid. As for liberal Zionist groups? Crickets. Even IfNotNow issues a toothless statement.
US election showed that American Jews and Israeli Jews could not be more different, American Jews dislike Netanyahu two-to-one, and so the Israel lobby is divided forever, because the Jewish community is divided on the Israel question, with many young Jews supporting boycott. And that divide will continue to spur political debate.
Daoud al-Khatib, 45, died in Ofer prison last month near the end of 18-year sentence, of heart attack. He had undergone open-heart surgery in 2017, but difficult living conditions in prison, combined with the grief of losing both his parents while behind bars, had an adverse effect on his health.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s withdrawal last Friday from an October memorial to Yitzhak Rabin is an act of irreverence for an Israeli leader we’ve not seen before at her political level; and the drama has roiled the pro-Israel community. Even the Biden campaign spoke up, an aide saying that AOC’s decision was “problematic” for the Democratic Party.
Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK, The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, 7amleh, and a number of other groups, are holding a digital day of action to draw attention to Facebook’s censorship of Palestinian voices.
Jewish Voice for Peace has become the first organization to unionize within the US-based Palestine solidarity movement. “We unionized because liberation starts at home (and the workplace) and cannot happen without workers at the forefront,” writes Amira al-Thawra.